Marine Le Pen’s presidential bid hangs in balance as court orders electronic tag | Marine Le Pen

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s 2027 presidential bid remains uncertain after she was sentenced to wear an electronic tag on her ankle after being found guilty of embezzling European parliament funds.

The Paris appeals court upheld Le Pen’s conviction but shortened her ban from running for elected office, potentially opening a narrow path for the far-right leader to enter the 2027 presidential race.

However, the court also sentenced Le Pen to three years in prison, with two years suspended and one year under house arrest, during which she will wear an electronic ankle tag for monitoring. This could make the presidential campaign politically and logistically difficult.

Le Pen, who heads the anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, has previously said she would not run if she was given an amended prison sentence in which her movements were restricted or she had to wear an electronic tag.

“You understand that if I am allowed to run for office but am effectively prevented from campaigning freely, that will not be possible,” Le Pen said in an interview last week.

Le Pen, a Pas-de-Calais lawmaker, was in talks at party headquarters on Tuesday afternoon about whether she could run for president and appeal again to France’s highest court. The decision to participate in the contest may depend on the exact restrictions of the electronic tag. Le Pen said it would be difficult to campaign if she could not go out at night to meet voters at rallies.

The first step for a person ordered to wear an electronic tag is usually a meeting with a special judge, which may occur over weeks or months. The judge will ask about the person’s work schedule to determine when the person can leave their home wearing a tag and what time they must return home in the evenings and on weekends. Le Pen may request that the sentence be reduced to six months.

The far-right figure was expected to make his first comments on the decision on French television news on Tuesday night.

The Paris court ruled that Le Pen, 57, played a central role in orchestrating a fake jobs scam of unprecedented size and duration to embezzle European parliament funds and funnel the money to pay her party in Paris between 2004 and 2016.

Le Pen’s ban on running for public office was reduced to the 15 months she had already served, with the remaining 30 months suspended. He was also fined €100,000 (£85,000).

Jordan Bardella, 30, who currently oversees the day-to-day running of the RN as party chairman, was on standby as a potential replacement presidential candidate in case Le Pen fails to run.

European Parliament lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve said outside the court that appeal judges were clear about politicians’ duty of honesty. He said: “If [Marine Le Pen] His failure to enter a further plea means that he has admitted that he is absolutely guilty of embezzlement. Can you run for France’s highest office, the presidency, if you’ve been found guilty of embezzling public funds? This is a political responsibility.”

Left-wing MP François Ruffin said: “The mere thought that Marine Le Pen could campaign while wearing an electronic tag is a sign that corruption is accepted in our country.”

Manon Aubry, of the radical left La France Insoumise, said: “The RN entered politics with the slogan ‘heads up, hands clean’. They leave it with ‘heads bowed, hands dirty’.”

Le Pen was seen as one of the leading candidates for the 2027 presidency until she was banned from running for five years with immediate effect after the first hearing last March.

He appealed last year’s ruling and a new hearing was held this year in the Paris appeals court.

Summing up the case, state prosecutors said Le Pen was at the center of a “contrived”, “centralized” and almost “industrial” system to embezzle European parliament funds.

They told the court that taxpayers’ money allocated to members of the European parliament for the salaries of their assistants in Strasbourg or Brussels was siphoned off by the party to pay the wages of its own workers in France from 2004 to 2016, in breach of parliamentary rules.

Prosecutors said the staff in France had no connection with work carried out in the European Parliament. The loss to European funds is estimated at €4.8 million (£4.2 million). Prosecutors said the party, later named Front National, achieved significant savings through the system. The system was well documented in email exchanges and batch documents.

Le Pen had hoped to run for the presidency for a fourth term next spring when Emmanuel Macron’s two terms in office end. He lost twice to Macron in the last second round in 2017 and 2022, taking his score to over 41%.

Before Tuesday’s decision, Le Pen said she would support Bardella, who is under her protection, “with energy, self-confidence and faith” if necessary, and added: “We never give up.”